Vera sits alone; she leans her head against the window, her hands lie idle in her lap, her eyes mechanically follow the rough, gray clouds that rack across the winter sky. In little more than a week she will be Vera Nevill no longer; she will have gained all that she desired and tried for--wealth, position, Kynaston--and Sir John! She should be well content, seeing that it has been her own doing all along. No one has forced or persuaded her into this engagement, no one has urged her on to a course contrary to her own inclination, or her own judgment. It has been her own act throughout. And yet, as she sits alone in the twilight, and counts over on her fingers the few short days that intervene between to-day and her bridal morning, hot miserable tears rise to her eyes, and fall slowly down, one by one, upon her clasped hands. She does not ask herself why she weeps; possibly she dares not. Only her thoughts somehow--by that strange connection of ideas which links something in our present to some other thing in our past, and which apparently is in no way dependent upon it--go back instinctively, as it were, to her dead sister, the Princess Marinari. "Oh, my poor darling Theodora!" she murmurs, half aloud; "if you had lived, you would have taken care of your Vera; if you had not died, I should never have come here, nor ever have known--any of them." And then she hears Marion's voice calling to her from the top of the stairs. "Vera! Vera! do come up and see it before it gets quite dark." She rises hastily and dashes away her tears. "What is the matter with me to-day!" she says to herself, impatiently. "Have I not everything in the world I wish for? I am happy--of course I am happy. I am coming, Marion, instantly." Upstairs her wedding dress, a soft cloud of rich silk and fleecy lace, relieved with knots of flowers, dark-leaved myrtle, and waxen orange blossoms, lies spread out upon her bed. Marion stands contemplating it, wrapt in ecstatic admiration; old Mrs. Daintree has gone away. "It is perfectly lovely! I am so glad you had silk instead of satin; nothing could show off Lady Kynaston's lace so well: is it not beautiful? you ought to try it on. Why, Vera! what is the matter? I believe you have been crying." "I was thinking of Theodora," she murmurs. "Ah! poor dear Theodora!" assents Marion, with a compassionate sigh; "how she would have liked to have known of your marriage; how pleased she would have been." Vera looks at her sister. "Marion," she says, in a low earnest voice; "if--if I should break it off, what would you say?" "Break it off!" cries her sister, horror-struck. "Good heavens, Vera! what can you mean? Have you gone suddenly mad? What is the matter with you? Break off a match like this at the last minute? You must be demented!"